BlackRock Inc. CEO Larry Fink met with Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador on May 7 in Mexico City in what a top advisor to the front runner described as a "very affable meeting," Reuters reported. "There was an immediate click between them. They both left the meeting charmed,” Carlos Urzua, told Reuters of the one-hour long meeting, which he attended. Urzua has been tapped by López Obrador as the country's new finance minister if he wins the July 1 elections.

BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink (Photo: Michael Cohen/Getty Images for The New York Times)

In a Mexican TV interview the same day, López Obrador, who has a double digit lead in the polls, said that he told Fink that he would uphold the rule of law and fight corruption, and would not expropriate private property. “They have lots of information...they’re intelligent,” López Obrador said about BlackRock after meeting Fink.

He said that he met with Fink because the company, which has $5.4 trillion in assets, asked to speak with him, "so we could get to know each other,” according to Reuters.

Fink also met with two other presidential candidates: Ricardo Anaya of the opposition PAN party, which is in second place, and José Antonio Meade of the official PRI party, who is trailing a distant third. BlackRock said in a statement that the company engages with governments “irrespective of party affiliations.” López Obrador is broadly perceived as a leftist and a populist.

Some Mexican political observers said the meeting with Fink was an attempt by López Obrador to try to reassure investors that he is not anti-business.

In recent weeks, López Obrador has been in an open brawl with Mexico's business elite. Mexico's leading business groups, which include México's billionaires and their companies among their members, have expressed strong reservations over López Obrador pledge to cancel a $13 billion airport project and back-peddle on the opening of México's energy sector to private investment.

Reuters said that López Obrador's campaign has met with multiple foreign fund managers in recent months to try and calm concerns about his policies, with aides telling investors that he is not opposed to foreign investment and markets.

BlackRock, witch ranks #59 on Forbes 2018 list of America's Largest Public Companies, has a strong presence in Mexico's financial service sector. Last November the company announced it would acquire the asset management business of Citibanamex, Citigroup's Mexican unit.